


Everything but Baking Cookies

by Charon_the_Sabercat



Category: Epithet Erased (Cartoon)
Genre: Chaotic Friendship, Gen, Giovanni going out of his way to improve Molly's life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:38:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24700168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charon_the_Sabercat/pseuds/Charon_the_Sabercat
Summary: (Because if Jello ever makes a Season 2, that will be one of the episodes and I don't want to intrude.)FINALLY, Giovanni found Molly outside of heists. Now it's time to catch up on schemes, wily neer-do-well-ism, and general do-crimery!or Molly's new best friends are a group of teenagers with too much time and creativity for their own good.
Relationships: Giovanni Potage/Crusher/Spike in a very mild way, Giovanni and the Bonzai Blasters, Molly Blyndeff & Giovanni Potage
Comments: 15
Kudos: 124





	1. Finally Found Bear Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly gets a visitor at work and they go to the store together.

Sweet Jazz City was big enough to have everything. Museums, theaters, live bands, a zoo, an aquarium, Thai food, a mini-theme park that was also an aquarium, all-night laundromats, vending machines that served unlabeled pop in front of a quirky wall mural, stores that only sold stuff imported from Japanese dollar stores, poser hippies that lived in McMansions, big rocks: the list went on forever.

As a result of all that cultural hoohah, it was near impossible to live there. The Blyndeff family, for instance, lived in the nearby satellite city of Almondine. It was legally not Sweet Jazz City, because the taxes were lower, but the huge metropolis had long since swallowed up the town. Still, one little Molly Blyndeff ran her one little family toy store not in the frenetic but lucrative Sweet Jaz City market, but in the sleepy burrough of Almondine. It made for long, slow shifts if she caught the wrong weekend. Other twelve-year-olds could spend slow Saturdays playing video games or getting frapps at the mall.

She was working retail.

At least in the next five minutes, her dad would take over the shift so she could leave… and go buy groceries. Her dad only ever voluntarily did night shift if they were out of Tagalongs. Still, it got her out of working, and she did enjoy her evening drives.

She could hear them on the wind. Molly’s heart clenched. Teenagers. A whole gaggle of them, and they were headed for the store. It would be her luck to get a bunch of teenagers before she got off shift. Her dad would probably hide until they left, too. She took in a quick breath to get her Customer Face on.

Molly didn’t get the chance to even talk before the red-headed leader teen kicked open the front door. “Greetings, toy sto-OH MY GOD Bear Trap, finally!!”

She was struck dumb, because this gaggle of teeangers was Giovanni Potage and the Bonzai Blasters. Sure it was them in street clothes and not wearing helmets, but one didn’t become part of and then thwart a separate museum heist with a group of friends and then forget them a week later. A whole bunch of emotions Molly wasn’t used to- relief, joy, and surprise- all jumped out of her mouth at once. “Giovanni!”

The shop got a loud louder much faster, because Giovanni almost threw himself over the counter to hug her head while the others yelled out their greetings. “Bear Trap! Oh my god, your job’s in Almondine?!”

Hugging with a countertop between them hurt her neck, but it was worth it. “I live in Almondine! The shop’s attached to my house!”

Giovanni broke the hug so he could properly stand up and throw his arms around while he talked. “I cannot believe one of my best boys has lived three blocks from my house this whole time, and I’ve never noticed until today!”

One of the boys, Crusher if she could tell by his voice, said, “Yeah, we kept checking all the toy stores in Sweet Jazz City! We used so much gas!”

Giovanni went nearly as red as his hair. “Oh my god Crusher she wasn’t supposed to know!”

Molly giggled. “Lol, rip.”

“ANYWAY! Now that your secret base has been discovered, you can no longer escape us!”

She cut Giovanni off with a quick, “But I don’t wanna escape you. Can we swap phone numbers real fast?”

“Oh totally!” The Banzai Blasters all whipped out their phones (except for one guy who she was pretty sure was Ben), and Giovanni went right back to his grand speech. “SO NOW, we must catch you up on your backlog of nefarious schemes!”

Her giddy feeling of relief cautiously deflated. Friends or not, Molly was running a business. “What kind of schemes? Were you going to shoplift?”

Giovanni scoffed the biggest scoff he could scoff. “No! Shoplifting is a loser crime!”

Car Crash cut in. “Unless it’s from Walmart!”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, Walmart sucks!”

Giovanni picked his own conversation thread back up. “Thievery is only cool if you steal from museums, vaults of gold bars, and faceless minimum-or-less wage conglomerates! Not from independent locally-owned businesses run by a literal baby!”

He had her up until the end there. Molly ventured to ask. “Sooo, what’s the nefarious scheme?”

Giovanni threw himself over a plastic kiddie chair. “I don’t knoooow, I’m just bored! My moms are having company over!”

Spike, the only other girl boy, explained. “We always hang out at his house.”

“And now we can’t!” he roared while dramatically draped over a tea party table playset. “I can’t even think over all their mom noises!”

Molly growled on his behalf. “Mood, but my sister.”

Now Ben scoffed. “So what, are we just gonna read Goldenbooks and play tea party until your aunties leave?”

“You probably shouldn’t,” said Molly. “Dad takes over my shift in a few more minutes. You can come with me to the store, though!”

“A-ha! _Loitering_!” Giovanni shot right back onto his feet. “To the _Piggly-Wiggly_!”

They are up just enough time for the shift change. Molly never counted up the takings so fast in her whole life. She could hear his feet coming down the hall…

He dad entered every room like he was actually important, and that was humiliating enough on its own. The mustard-colored ketchup stained shirt and pajama bottoms only made the shame coil up in her gut even harder. “Hey Molly! Lookie what I got for you: the shopping list! I put stars by all the stuff you just gotta get!”

The Bonzai Blasters had been very quiet. Giovanni broke it. “That’s your dad?”

Molly answered. “That’s my dad.”

“What does he mean ‘you have to get’?”

“I usually just take the car.” Molly hopped off her chair. “All yours, Dad.”

“All righty! Time to match my dragons!” Her dad slammed his weight down onto Molly’s plastic chair and broke it, just like he did with the last four. “Woop! Looks like I just spent the petty cash again!”

And, as if no one else in the world existed until then, he finally perked to attention and addressed the five teenagers in his store. “Oh! Hey there, kiddos! Lookin’ to buy something?”

Car Crash muttered, “She… drives...”

Spike whispered back, “With a dad like that? No wonder. She’s like Matilda.”

Giovanni, lost for words, stammered. “I’m… waiting for my ride?”

That was as good a signal as any. Molly took the back door through the house and into the garage. The car fired up with a resounding battery-affirming rev. When she pulled around from the back, the Bonzai Blasters were waiting with their mouths hanging open and their phones out. They must have been in awe of her reckless and dangerous driving as she pulled up right on the sidewalk!

Oh who was she kidding? She drove a Barbie Dream Van.

Giovanni threw the expected fit. “THIS is your car?! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re driving, but I’m more concerned that it’s by yourself in a Tonka Truck.”

Molly shrugged. “It’s a Power Wheels.”

“And it’s pink! Couldn’t you get one of the ATV ones instead?!”

Car Crash added, “Mine had a dino head!”

“I needed the trunk space!” Molly patted the black ‘back seat’ plus cooler for frozen goods. “And since I use it to haul groceries, I can buy it at cost and still write it off as a business expense!”

Giovanni groaned in out-loud disapproval.

Ben put it better. “I’m walking.”

“Well then I call whatever you call shotgun in a Barbie car!” Giovanni pretzeled himself into the back seat. “Godspeed, Bear Trap.”

They were off. They were off at only slightly above walking speed, but they were off. It was the weirdest, and only, entourage she had ever had in her life, but it was pretty great. She wasn’t used to company at all on her grocery runs!”

Giovanni wailed. “You got any tunes on this thing?”

“I don’t use the radio ‘cause I don’t wanna drain the battery.” Molly pulled her phone out of her pocket. “But you can play the music from Papa’s Scooperia real loud like I do!”

She hadn’t heard that many people groan in disapproval at once since… well, school yesterday, but still.

“Bear Trap, I refuse to let one of my minions jam out to Papa’s Scooperia,” Giovanni complained. “Why don’t you have real music?”

Molly didn’t want to admit why, because she knew she’d hear about it for the rest of the drive, but she couldn’t think of anything in the moment. There was no nice tidy lie. The confession was inevitable. “… Dad used all this month’s data.”

Giovanni punctuated his thoughts to thumps against Molly’s head. “Bear Trap. My minion. My wonderful smart minion boy… did I teach you nothing?”

Crusher’s thoughts were more direct. “Your dad sucks.”

“Well, great, now I’m gonna have to provide the tunes and bad guy tutelage! All right: Bear Trap. Are you obeying the speed limit?”

Molly considered the question thoroughly. “Uh… be default, yes? I can’t make forty miles per hour in a plastic car.”

“Bad Guy Rule number six: always floor it!”

Car Crash jumped right on that rule. “It makes your car run better!”

“And the sub-rule of rule number six: floor it to bitchin’ theme music!”

Spike went “Oo! And you have to drive places that aren’t roads, like Lupin III!”

“So floor it, Bear Trap!” Giovanni roared. “Floor it like the wind!”

She had never floored it in her car before. She had always been terrified of the battery running out, leaving her stranded in the street with a half hour walk carrying fifty pounds of groceries. Molly still felt kind of an electric cold in her skin just at the thought of it.

That feeling, she told herself, was called a “thrill”. She grinned, and she floored it.

The little car took off faster than she thought it could go, even with Giovanni in the back seat! The Bonzai Blasters cheered after her and broke into a jog- a whole jog!- to keep up. Giovanni broke out into some sick a capella guitar riff that turned into techno the further they went.

“Do you LIKE?! My car!!! Dunnununnahahaaah! DOOGEEDOGEGDOOGEOTO- YES YOU LADY- Bear Trap go through the park!”

She’d passed it so many times, the little city park, and never considered driving through it to get to Piggly-Wiggly. It just wasn’t something a good little girl did. But she wasn’t a good little girl now! She was a minion boy! She swung the car left, straight into the crosswalk, all while Giovanni belted out “GAS GAS GAAAS, I’m gonna step on the gas, TONIIIGHT-” They drove straight through a flock of pigeons! Came within arm’s reach of the snow cone cart! Clipped the grass on the first corner! “AND I’LL BE YOUR HEEROOOO!”

Car Crash went full announcer! “She’s coming up on the hairpin turn through the aromatics garden!”

“She can’t do it!” shouted Spike. “There’s no way she can come out of those turns at full speed! She’ll go straight into the Japanese pond!”

“You fool!” cheered Crusher. “That rear-mounted Boss makes her perfect for drifting!”

Ben grumped, “You can’t drift in a Barbie car!”

Molly wasn’t even sure what drifting was, but when she went around the second turn at full speed, the side wheels came up off the ground and the bumper scraped the concrete. Pride and shock punched her in equal measure; she never ever scratched her car before! But she did it with Giovanni literally singing her praises in the back seat-

It hit her all at once. Other twelve-year-olds were spending their sleepy weekend sipping frapps and tapping on their phones.

Molly was illegally racing through a public park in a Barbie car while a team of street criminals provided live commentary and techno music.

“Best! Weekend! EVER!” Molly whooped!

“WRONG!” said Giovanni. “FIRST weekend ever, with the Bonzai Blasters! We’re all cool all the time! We are never boring ever!”

And then the battery ran out in the store parking lot, so they had to load the groceries into the seats and carry the car home. It wasn’t the most exciting part of the trip, no, but it was overall pretty great. Molly ate well that night and went to bed smiling. Giovanni texted her in the night asking what they would do tomorrow. She had a bunch of ideas and would probably forget half of them by the time she woke up, but it was okay. Everything was cool, and the store was out of Tagalongs.


	2. Diggy Diggy Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah some of the chapters will be short.
> 
> Molly and Giovanni want a magic swimming hole.

“Bear Trap!” Giovanni kicked open the shop door. “We’re digging a pool today! Close the store!”

She didn’t entirely know why that worked, but it did. Three sentences, and the store was closed, and she was at Ben’s house with a Garden Weasel and a bottle of water. Ben had an old house but a real big boring back yard.

“And that’s what makes it perfect for building a pool! Just like I saw on Youtube!”

They all clicked together in her head: Youtube, pool, dig. Molly balked. “Wait, are we talking about the same Youtube channel?”

Giovanni brandished his shovel. “Kh, probably!”

Ben threw his bedroom window open. “Boss, c’mon! It’s my yard!”

“Look, it your mom says you’re grounded, you’re grounded! I’m not arguing with her!”

“What does that have to do with my yard?!”

“Ben!” shouted Ben’s mom. “Grounded!”

Ben, cowed, closed his window. Giovanni cackled. “ _That’s_ what it has to do with his yard. Come on, Bear Trap, let’s make us a magic pool with grass carpet!”

Molly found herself a lawn chair and sat. “I don’t think it’s gonna work that way.”

“Don’t be a downer! Watch!” Giovanni jammed his shovel into the grass. It only went in about two inches and jammed into his shoulder. “ _ **WRYYYY!**_ ”

“I googled those videos,” Molly explained. “The dirt in Cambodia is almost all sand. It’s mostly clay and rock here. And the roots of that big tree in the neighbor’s yard.”

Giovanni raged upon his shovel to stomp it down into the dirt. “Look, it’s not impossible to dig a hole! Crusher has a pool! _It can be done_!”

“Wait, if Crusher has a pool, why are we digging one at Ben’s house?”

“Because it’s not a magic water pit with grass carpets!” Giovanni cried. “It’s prefab fiberglass! It’s basically just an outside trailer bathtub! And it’s only _three feet deep_!”

“Wait,” Molly was taken aback. “Really?”

“I know, right? You could get spit on and get more wet!”

Ben’s window shot open. “I’m gonna tell Crusher you’re dissing his pool!”

Giovanni chided. “Can’t tell Crusher nothin’ when you’re grounded, _D-Getter_!”

Molly almost spit out her water laughing. “ _Wait what_?!”

Ben blushed bright red. “It was a C-!”

Giovanni roared in triumph. “ _It was a D_! I know, because I asked your little sister!”

“TRAITOR! I am so eating all the Goldish-”

Ben’s mom shouted. “Ben! Grounded!”

Giovanni waited until Ben’s window was shut before waggling his butt in it.

Molly was suspicious. “Are we really digging a pool? Or do you want to get on Ben’s nerves?”

“Well,” said Giovanni, “Having a pool would be great. Plus Car Crash said Ben tried to punch you once.”

“Oh yeah...” Molly jumped up. “Here, lemme break up the soil for you.”

In the end, they dug until they hit a time capsule shoebox, then spent an hour poking fun at child Ben’s braces and Digimon cards until Molly went home. The next day, she was sunburned. Crusher offered to let them swim at his pool.


	3. Modern Treasure Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not illegal if somebody in the house wants you do it it. Giovanni swears by this.

“Bear Trap, in the car, digging for treasure, BRING A MASK.”

She wasn’t sure how excited to be, but she was quick to close the store and hop into the back of Car Crash’s truck. Spike passing her kitchen gloves felt like a bad sign, but Giovanni had said treasure, and that didn’t seem like the kind of thing he’d like about. They rolled through the neighborhood with no seat belts, or seats, like rebels or southerners, until they arrived at an old house with two cars in the driveway and a crumbling retaining wall around the yard. Car Crash pulled the truck up behind the two parked cards and only just tapped the bumpers.

“All right,” he said, “This is Aunt Becky’s house. Goggles on.”

Everybody’s Banzai Blaster goggles went up, and Molly knew for sure something was going down when Giovanni donned his own. “Boss…?”

“You get temporary gear!” Giovanni popped a pair of sea monster swim goggles onto her face. “Here, my old attack mask. Get those on tight, and put your mask on already!”

And, well, she did, but she had questions, so many questions. “Um, what exactly-”

“Briefing at the door, Bear Trap!” Giovanni pulled up his mask- it was flower print- and pulled her out of the back of the truck like a baby.

There was, indeed, a briefing at the door, but it was the back door and Car Crash doing the briefing. He spoke up through his mask- plain black- while tensely gripping the wobbling doorknob. “All right, guys, we have Uncle Wade’s blessing, but not a lot of time while Aunt Becky’s at bridge club. Avoid the living room and anything in direct line of sight. It’s anything you can grab in whatever containers you can carry out. Quantity, not quality.”

“Woah, wait,” Molly interrupted. “Are we stealing from an old lady?!”

“No, Bear Trap, we’re treasure hunting,” corrected Giovanni. “Stealing implies that she’ll miss anything we take.”

“But-”

“Trust me; you’ll get it.”

And then Car Crash opened the door. Light crept into the house in little increments, like a mold taking over a loaf of bread. Mountains, literal mountains and valleys and foothills of things built up in furniture-swallowing piles, filling the house to the walls. They blocked the windows. They gave off a mist of dust. Molly couldn’t even tell where the room began and ended from her eyes dancing all over all of the stuff.

Molly screamed, “Holy toledo!”

“Banzai Blasters!” Giovanni hollered. “Break!”

Everyone rushed in past her. She hesitated long enough for the smell, the old and half-rotten smell, to hit her through her mask. She was left scrambling in after them in their wake. She made the mistake of shutting the door after her. It cloaked the room in a suffocating immediate darkness. The only thing that stood out was the bright red of Giovanni’s cape, and she threw herself towards it.

“Wait-” She slipped and landed on the outstretched footrest of a recliner chair held up by a stack of magazines. “Wait! What am I looking for?!”

“Literally anything!” Giovanni called out to her from a corner. “This broad’s a Hoarder Classic! There’s no telling what she- Oo! Yarn! This brand’s normally like twelve dollars a skein!”

Ben hollered from the kitchen. “I have grocery bags!”

“This is why you don’t have a nickname, Ben! You think too small! There’s probably reusable grocery bags! Backpacks! Duffles!”

Molly blinked and tried to make her eyes focus. The piles were starting to shift into their component parts instead of one big mess, but none of the things she could see were interesting to her. There were tons of little porcelain angels on shelves, and so many VHS tapes that they spilled out into the floor like itty bitty Stonehenges. Lots of magazines, lots of house slippers… if she was going to look for things she would-

No, first she needed something to carry her loot in. Prioritize.

Molly dated into the valley of garbage and made her way towards the hall. She barely fit in the corridor of stacked doors. None of them were worth potentially toppling the stacks for. It was mostly microwave cookbooks from the 70s.

Distantly, she heard Crusher shout, “How do I know if a bottle of shampoo’s been opened or not?!”

Spike answered. “Weight! Shake it and see if it slurps! When in doubt, aim for the back of the cabinet!”

Molly needed bedrooms, and the house had a second story. The rest of the Blasters had filed into the first empty room they ran across, but the good stuff was prob-

And then Molly stopped, because she realized she was being methodical in robbing someone’s house.

“Are you guys absolutely sure this is okay?!” she asked the house. “Like, what if I take her favorite teddy bear, or a wedding ring, or something?!”

“We trust your judgment, Bear Trap!” Spike answered. “The fact that you’re asking means you’re not gonna do it!”

“Plus, you see this house?! This woman has a problem!” Giovanni sounded so far away. “Do what you do best!”

Molly hesitated. “… cower?”

“Be smart!”

Right… be smart. She could do that. She had already been doing it! Onto… a bedroom. She put her weight onto a laundry-covered step that turned out to be an unsteady stack of more books beside the actual stairs, but after that terrifying wiggle under her hand, she made her way up to the second floor.

There were three doors: one was a bathroom, one looked like the master bedroom, and one was closed. She went for the closed one, and it wouldn’t open at first. She had to put her whole weight on it and dig her heels into the hardwood floor. It wasn’t stuck, or locked; the other side was just so thick with things that it had to shift to make room for her. By the time she could wiggle her shoulder into the gap, a pile toppled into the new space and wedged the door open. It was mostly shoes. Molly climbed over them and into the room.

Her feet dropped into the strata of shoes like quicksand. She made her way over the mess by sitting on her hip and sliding across it all, a thick layer cake of shoes and hats in loose boxes. Past the barricade at the door, though, she could pick up hints of old humanity. There were posters taped to the wall with peeling painter’s tape, and in the corner, a bed post lay illuminated by a sliver of window shining past a pyramid of longboxes. This had been a kid’s- maybe a teenager’s- room.

Backpacks!

“Gaaah, Ben, get me the shopping bags!” Giovanni rumbled from downstairs. “I can’t hold all this yarn!”

She could hear them so clearly through the heating vents in the wall, it was almost spooky. It was like Ben was laughing condescendingly right in her ear. “Oh, so the mighty boss surrenders to my small thinking?!”

“Shut up, Ben! What do you even have?!”

“Food! Four bags of pretzels, four boxes of Swiss Miss, five jars of peanut butter-”

“No check the expiration date on those! You could get that freaky peanut poisoning!”

“I have a buncha bath bombs, sir!” said Crusher.

Spike almost squealed in joy. “I have an entire suitcase of nothing but old McDonald’s toys! There’s teeny Beanie Babies in here! With tags!”

“Hot damn, Spike, that’s a haul! What about you, Bear Trap?”

Molly had only just started to force the closet door open. With her back against the door jamb and her feet on the door, she pushed. “You guys ever see The Rescuers?”

“What, the movie with the eagle?”

“No, the first one!” she grunted. “Where the little girl’s trapped in the cave full of water and she can’t open the skull with the diamond in it?”

Giovanni sounded alarmed. “Wait, what?! Who has a skull?!”

“Bear Trap, are you okay?” shouted Spike.

That’s when her foot slipped off the door and she dropped hard. It made a ton of noise and wobbled the hell out of the door, but she was still mostly okay. Just a loud landing on a few loose shoes.

She was never going to convince Giovanni, though. “AH! Bear Trap’s down! Abort mission! Recover and evacuate, go go go!”

“Double time to upstairs position!” Crusher hollered.

“BE CAREFUL, the stairs aren’t stairs!” Car Crash warned.

“Guys! I just tripped!” Molly struggled for footing. Her arm kept getting tangled in something every time she tried to move it. She yanked hard to get it free, and what landed in her lap was pink and blue and black and glittery all at once… with straps! “Hey, a backpack!”

“I’m comin’, Bear Trap! Don’t let anything crush you to death!” Giovanni’s arm and half his head met the door. “OW damn it and it just healed from the shovel!”

Molly threw him the backpack. “Look! This whole closet’s full of bags!”

“That’s great, Bear Trap, but-” He cut himself off with a gasp. “This is a Lisa Frank! Like, classic style! Throw me another one!”

Molly blindly reached, grabbed, and threw. The bad didn’t make it the whole way; it was a big heavy duffle with a whale on it. “I think this one’s from an aquarium!”

“Guys, we NEED in this room!” Giovanni ordered. “Everybody clear the door!”

“Clearing the door” meant throwing most of the shoes out into the hallway, but within ten minutes, all the Banzai Blasters were sinking into the quickshoe pit and diving for the closet. Molly just kept digging through that closet, past the bags and into a deeper layer of stuffed animals and Barbies. Harden by retail, she still had a soft spot for toys she didn’t have to pay for. She found herself stuffing her pockets with smaller teddy bears and grabbing a particularly huge one with a missing eye and not letting go.

“Judas Priest t-shirts!” Ben gushed. “Your aunt listens to Judas Priest?!”

“Hell no!” said Car Crash. “But Cousin Lee used to! Look, here’s all their old records- and the record player! The whole thing!”

“Anybody check the longboxes yet?” said Giovanni. “We’ve gotta see what comics we’re dealing with here!”

“On it!” Molly volunteered.

“Good initiative, Bear Trap!” Meanwhile, I’ll be helping myself-” Giovanni squealed. “To the cute little Puumba, look at him with the little bugs in his mouth!”

“Like, I hate to fit the stereotype, but has anyone else actually looked at the shoes?” Spike asked. “Yeah they’re all secondhand, but there’s some really good ones in here!”

“I’ve got the boxes!” Molly picked up the first book she saw. “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2nd Edition. Is that good?”

“Only if your’e ready to have the COOLEST GAME NIGHT EVER!” Giovanni saluted her. “Cadet Bear Trap, you might just earn a promotion after this!”

That in mind, Molly suggested, “Hey, now that I can look out the window, I can see the truck. What if we threw all the soft stuff into the truck bed from here so we only have to carry out the heavy stuff?”

“Sitting on a duffle bag of t-shirts does sound better than sitting on the spare tire,” said Crusher.

“YOU-” said Giovanni. “Have just been promoted to Major Bear Trap.”

In the end, they made off with about half the contents of the room, most of Aunt Becky’s yarn and peanut butter, and all of her bath bombs. At last report, she hadn’t even noticed it was gone. Molly wound up going home with a lot of the clothes too small for everyone else, as well as a Lisa Frank backpack’s worth of stuffed animals, duplicate Dungeons and Dragons books, and Chips Ahoy. The eyeless bear, dubbed Igone, she carried home in her arms. Knowing Giovanni had the original copies, Molly gave the books a quick look-over, found most of them boring, and put all the boring ones on eBay. It was a tidy $200 total after shipping, and Uncle Wade was asking for them back next month.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic for my little sister, who's 17 years younger than me and going through some rough shit in her life right now. I'm crossposting this on the other fanfiction posting site so she doesn't see this note here, but this is all dedicated to her.


End file.
